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readallthenewberys2017-10-13 10:21 pm
justice_turtle) wrote in readallthenewberys2017-10-13 10:21 pm
Newbery Honor: Ood-le-uk the Wanderer (Alice Lide & Margaret Johansen)
*deep sigh* Sometimes it's hard to believe there will ever be a good Newbery again, you know? ;P Further up and further in...
* The jacket flap, pasted inside the front cover, tells me this will be a story of an Inuit boy from Alaska (it says "Eskimo", of course) who gets carried to Siberia by a storm and winds up establishing a trade route. I'm not even sure how I feel about that.
* The table of contents tells me exactly nothing yet. The list of illustrations gives very little more.
* Our protagonist Ood-le-uk is heading out to a whale hunt with the men of his tribe. He is "undersized" and afraid of everything. Presumably he will find his manly courage, as in so many other coming-of-age stories.
* "But as though to compensate the small, runty, fur-clad youngster for his timidity, Nature had made a strange gift to Ood-le-uk. She had presented him with an imagination, a thing Eskimos are not given to possessing." ...I might be out of here in record time, kids. :P
* The men are hunting whales in an umiak (or "oomiak"), an open-topped cargo canoe. This appears to be accurate to the region, best I can figure?
* I'm pretty much skimming. Ood-le-uk has brought home a sled-load of whale meat, nearly getting swept away on an ice floe in the process, but still considers himself a coward. The village went to an island to hunt more whales, but a meteorite fell on it and they all fled in terror. Ood-le-uk found a chunk of meteorite in his parka hood and sort-of-accidentally smithed it into a spearhead. A metal spearhead is innately Better than a bone or stone one -- Ood-le-uk becomes a briefly celebrated hunter, till he loses the spearhead down a crevasse. Then in winter, because people are starving, he goes to the now-forbidden island to fetch some meteorite iron and make more iron spearheads. (Somehow this white-man's imagination of his never leaves him fearing evil spirits more than his fellows, only being White Man's Awesome, which of course the rest of his people can't appreciate. I've skipped over a lot of incidents where his outdoorsy "friend" Putnuk chides him for caring about "something one cannot eat", etc etc.)
* The other villagers do appreciate the iron spearheads, at least, and Ood-le-uk is given as a trophy the head of the first seal that gets killed with one. Being now a Man, Ood-le-uk "walked proudly, looked Putnuk straight in the face, and did no more of the women's work in helping Nup-su [his mother] about the hut". Because the sign of Real Manhood is that you don't do Women's Work anymore. Can I be done now?
* Ood-le-uk leaves a polar-bear hunt to go stack driftwood, because "he would rather make than destroy... but this was not a hunter's work", i.e. because he has White Man Priorities. He rejoins the hunt in time to kill the bear, but still considers himself A Coward because he's not stupid enough to feel no fear while at hand-to-hand range with a goddamn polar bear! *headdesk* This isn't going to get questioned or reframed, I will lay you odds. Fucking toxic masculinity!
* Ood-le-uk gets trapped on a big ice floe and swept away to an uninhabited part of what is presumably Siberia. After he puts together a winter shelter for himself, he decides to go hunt a fucking bull walrus alone, so as to get a hide out of which to build a boat, so he can eventually get back home. I can only assume this endeavor will end in success and repeated self-recrimination for cowardice, because walruses are fucking humongous, even with a magic iron spear.
* Yup. He gets wounded in his leg, and the wound becomes infected but somehow heals on its own rather than killing him. Then he goes to work building his canoe over the winter.
* "For in his homeland, as a general thing, it was the women who cheerfully drew home the loads, while their men marched with hands free... so they could swiftly hurl themselves in the face of danger and protect their families." OH SURE, that's absolutely the reason you use your women as pack animals, rather than say your dogs or your sleds or any hypothetical reindeer. Cheerfully! Couldn't bring yourself to criticize this part of Inuit culture, could you, authors? It's just plain right and proper to have your women ground down in housewifely service, like white people do.
Sorry, I might be in a mood. :P
*flips to the end* Oh, sure. We're not establishing trade with the Siberian tribespeople for anything they personally can offer. It's all for the goods that "had traveled from the white man's fair all the way to the edge of Asia". I'm tired. *headthunk* I cannot be arsed with this book anymore. Why am I doing this damn project again? :S
* The jacket flap, pasted inside the front cover, tells me this will be a story of an Inuit boy from Alaska (it says "Eskimo", of course) who gets carried to Siberia by a storm and winds up establishing a trade route. I'm not even sure how I feel about that.
* The table of contents tells me exactly nothing yet. The list of illustrations gives very little more.
* Our protagonist Ood-le-uk is heading out to a whale hunt with the men of his tribe. He is "undersized" and afraid of everything. Presumably he will find his manly courage, as in so many other coming-of-age stories.
* "But as though to compensate the small, runty, fur-clad youngster for his timidity, Nature had made a strange gift to Ood-le-uk. She had presented him with an imagination, a thing Eskimos are not given to possessing." ...I might be out of here in record time, kids. :P
* The men are hunting whales in an umiak (or "oomiak"), an open-topped cargo canoe. This appears to be accurate to the region, best I can figure?
* I'm pretty much skimming. Ood-le-uk has brought home a sled-load of whale meat, nearly getting swept away on an ice floe in the process, but still considers himself a coward. The village went to an island to hunt more whales, but a meteorite fell on it and they all fled in terror. Ood-le-uk found a chunk of meteorite in his parka hood and sort-of-accidentally smithed it into a spearhead. A metal spearhead is innately Better than a bone or stone one -- Ood-le-uk becomes a briefly celebrated hunter, till he loses the spearhead down a crevasse. Then in winter, because people are starving, he goes to the now-forbidden island to fetch some meteorite iron and make more iron spearheads. (Somehow this white-man's imagination of his never leaves him fearing evil spirits more than his fellows, only being White Man's Awesome, which of course the rest of his people can't appreciate. I've skipped over a lot of incidents where his outdoorsy "friend" Putnuk chides him for caring about "something one cannot eat", etc etc.)
* The other villagers do appreciate the iron spearheads, at least, and Ood-le-uk is given as a trophy the head of the first seal that gets killed with one. Being now a Man, Ood-le-uk "walked proudly, looked Putnuk straight in the face, and did no more of the women's work in helping Nup-su [his mother] about the hut". Because the sign of Real Manhood is that you don't do Women's Work anymore. Can I be done now?
* Ood-le-uk leaves a polar-bear hunt to go stack driftwood, because "he would rather make than destroy... but this was not a hunter's work", i.e. because he has White Man Priorities. He rejoins the hunt in time to kill the bear, but still considers himself A Coward because he's not stupid enough to feel no fear while at hand-to-hand range with a goddamn polar bear! *headdesk* This isn't going to get questioned or reframed, I will lay you odds. Fucking toxic masculinity!
* Ood-le-uk gets trapped on a big ice floe and swept away to an uninhabited part of what is presumably Siberia. After he puts together a winter shelter for himself, he decides to go hunt a fucking bull walrus alone, so as to get a hide out of which to build a boat, so he can eventually get back home. I can only assume this endeavor will end in success and repeated self-recrimination for cowardice, because walruses are fucking humongous, even with a magic iron spear.
* Yup. He gets wounded in his leg, and the wound becomes infected but somehow heals on its own rather than killing him. Then he goes to work building his canoe over the winter.
* "For in his homeland, as a general thing, it was the women who cheerfully drew home the loads, while their men marched with hands free... so they could swiftly hurl themselves in the face of danger and protect their families." OH SURE, that's absolutely the reason you use your women as pack animals, rather than say your dogs or your sleds or any hypothetical reindeer. Cheerfully! Couldn't bring yourself to criticize this part of Inuit culture, could you, authors? It's just plain right and proper to have your women ground down in housewifely service, like white people do.
Sorry, I might be in a mood. :P
*flips to the end* Oh, sure. We're not establishing trade with the Siberian tribespeople for anything they personally can offer. It's all for the goods that "had traveled from the white man's fair all the way to the edge of Asia". I'm tired. *headthunk* I cannot be arsed with this book anymore. Why am I doing this damn project again? :S